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About a month ago my family took a road trip to southern Colorado primarily to explore the Great Sand Dunes National Park. As luck would have it, the weather didn’t entirely cooperate, and we awoke to freshly fallen snow on our first morning outside the dunes. Recalling that a few friends had mentioned a nearby alligator and reptile rescue (yep, in Colorado – there are geothermal springs), we decided to head there instead of to the dunes that day.

While at the rescue, my 9-year-old son had a chance to hold a young alligator. After getting a few pictures snapped (ha, no pun intended), the alligator handler filled out a certificate of bravery for Julian and had the alligator bite the paper to “make it official.” He then asked my son to hold out his arm for a real alligator bite to show his friends that he really did hold one. Julian thought momentarily, then extended his arm. The handler started laughing a little bit and waved his arm away saying, “When you get older, people might ask you to do dumb things just for their entertainment. They’re called your friends. But you don’t have to do it. You can say no.”

That made me think about how as my kids enter their teenage years (it’s coming up so fast), they will likely encounter other kids who suggest they do X, Y, or Z — and marijuana may very well be one of those things.

In 2014 marijuana became legal for adults 21+ in Colorado. As a result of this, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) was tasked with educating the public about the health effects associated with retail marijuana use. Good to Know Colorado is the nation’s first public education campaign regarding the legal, safe and responsible use of retail marijuana. The campaign also helps parents and other adults learn the facts so they can have a positive, effective conversation with youth about not using retail marijuana before age 21.

Did you know that a child’s brain is still developing until age 25? For the best chance to reach their full potential, young people should not use retail marijuana. Using marijuana before age 21 can have negative health effects such as: decreased athletic performance, difficulty learning and memory issues, impaired judgment, and it’s harder to stop using marijuana if you start at a young age. For more information about the health effects of marijuana on youth, visit the Good to Know website.

According to the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, first-time use of most substances, such as drugs and alcohol, among youth peaks during the summer months of June and July. That’s why it’s important for parents to start talking with their kids NOW about marijuana to ensure their children understand the reasons why and how to say no to retail marijuana.

The Good to Know website is an excellent resource when it comes to learning how to talk to your kids and encourage them to say no, while staying positive and maintaining a good relationship with your kids. For most parents, talking to their kids about drug and alcohol use doesn’t come naturally. And although it may be easy to tell kids to “just say no,” it’s not always that easy for kids to actually do it.

Good to Know offers a lot of great tips for parents to talk to their kids and advice on how to help kids find a way to say no that works for them, including:

Role-playing with kids is a great way to practice saying “no.”

Many kids don’t realize saying “no” can be as simple as saying, “If I get caught, I won’t be able to do sports, theater, dance, etc.”

You can also encourage your kids to use you as an excuse to avoid marijuana use. For example, “My parents would ground me for the summer.” This is especially effective for pre-teens.

Make sure you have the conversation more than once.

See below for more tips on how to talk to your kids about underage marijuana use.

Parenting comes with its challenges at all ages of development, which is why as we enter those tween/teen years, I’m thankful for resources such as this one to help me tackle an otherwise possibly difficult subject.

For more information about talking to your kids about underage marijuana use, please visit the Good to Know website at GoodtoKnowColorado.com/Talk.

This post is sponsored by Single Edition Media on behalf of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Opinions are my own.

One of the many things I enjoy about unschooling is that my kids get to work on a skill when they are ready, not at an arbitrary time when someone says they should.

Up until last summer, my son (who was six at the time) had shown no interest in drawing. This was in stark contrast to my daughter who has loved to draw since she was very young. I wasn’t really concerned about it, but one day when I was at the store I decided to pick up a few pads of drawing paper, crayons and markers to bring home and strew*, if you will.

After arriving home with the supplies, I announced to the kids what I had bought and set the supplies out on the table. I honestly thought my daughter would dive right in, while my son Julian would shrug and go off to play Legos or Minecraft.

However, Julian came right up to the table, opened up the fresh new pad of paper and markers and immediately started drawing. And drawing. And drawing. He literally sat at the table for a good hour or two, filling each page with a new creation. And getting progressively better at his drawing.

He ended up filling the entire drawing pad with pictures that day, even turning much of it into a story which, when asked about it, he narrated aloud. He later said to me, “When I started this book, I wasn’t very good at drawing, but I got better and better.” And it’s true. He improved a lot that day. The beauty of it was that it was all at his own pace and in his own time. He was never asked to draw against his will before he was ready, therefore was never turned off to drawing.

I loved that he could see his improvement and that he took pride in his work.

Unschooling isn’t always easy — it involves so much trust — but it’s moments like this that reaffirm my decision to do it. I believe my kids will learn what they need to learn in their own time. It’s my job to trust them and help them along the way.

“All I am saying … can be summed up in two words: Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” — John Holt

*Strew: to place objects in the path of kids without any expectation, coercion, or force of use.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. – George Bernard Shaw

It’s 11:41 p.m. on a Thursday as I lie in my bed listening to the murmur of my kids from the next room. They are very involved in their play — something that often occurs in the late hours of the night when one might typically expect children to be sleeping. But they play so well together in these late-night moments, creating elaborate stories, developing characters (tonight it’s a city of talking Matchbox cars), working through conflict, working on their communication skills, developing dialogue, and more. Who am I to interrupt them just because the clock says it’s nearly midnight?

Play is the work of the child. – Maria Montessori

According to Dr. Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College and acclaimed author:

Human children, who have the most to learn, play far more than any other primates when they are allowed to do so. Play is the natural means by which children and other young mammals educate themselves. The most important skills that children everywhere must learn in order to live happy, productive, moral lives are skills that cannot be taught in school. Such skills cannot be taught at all. They are learned and practiced by children in play. These include the abilities to think creatively, to get along with other people and cooperate effectively, and to control their own impulses and emotions.

Research shows that playing is paramount to our physical, intellectual and socio-emotional development. The play I’m talking about here is the unstructured, spontaneous and imaginative escapades that we had in our childhoods; not the structured and organized sports of today. The benefits of playing are immense. They learn different academic concepts, the rules of behaviour with peers, manners, friendship, decision-making, conflict resolution, cooperation and competition.

Eventually I may ask them to wrap up their game for the night, but for now I am grateful that tomorrow (like most days) we have nowhere we must be in the morning. For now I will enjoy the sweet sound of my children getting along, the sound of imagination, the sound of play.

My friend Jill recently posted a link on her Facebook page to How to Mentor a Kid with Big (Possibly Unrealistic) Dreams by Lori Pickert from Project-Based Homeschooling. The article touches on something that I’ve struggled with in the past. What’s the “right” way to respond to your kids when they have dreams that are beyond what you think they can accomplish – either now or ever? Do you encourage them even though you *know* it’s not going to work? Do you attempt to let them down gently to avoid disappointment and tell them you don’t think it’s possible? Maybe we are trying to save them from embarrassment or even save ourselves from embarrassment. Maybe we are afraid of failure — either for ourselves or our kids.What’s a mom to do?

For example, my 6-year-old son has often said when he grows up he is going to invent a machine that makes him become a kid again or he’s going to time travel or become a super hero that does X, Y, or Z. When he first started voicing these lofty goals, I wasn’t sure how to react. My first thought was, “that’s probably not going to happen, buddy” but I didn’t say that out loud. Instead I’d try my best to encourage him, even if I felt like his ideas weren’t based in reality, but it was a struggle for me. Was I doing the right thing?

Pickert says:

Before you move to stop your children from trying to do the impossible, take a breath and remember what your job is: to mentor and support, to brainstorm and listen, to remind and reflect. Your job isn’t to step in and tell them their ideas won’t work and their plans are doomed.
Remind yourself:You don’t know what your kid can do.

One example shared in the article is about a child who wants to write a novel and have it published by a real publisher. Something similar came up for my daughter a few years ago. Unfortunately, I hadn’t figured this all out yet and rather than encouraging her and then (potentially, but who knows?!) see her fail, I thought I was being a good mom and tried to prevent disappointment by explaining how hard it would be to do or something along those lines.

Pickert points out that when you respond that way, “You haven’t prevented disappointment — you’ve only brought it from the misty future to the right now, and you also killed all the learning and skill-building that would have happened in the interim.
…
Choose to deliver your bad news — that her dream is statistically unlikely — and what will happen to her ambitions? What will happen to her idea of herself as a writer? Will she wait and start her writing career at 15? At twenty? Never?”

Had I encouraged her, who knows what would have happened. But I’m not beating myself up over this either. I live and learn, just like the next person. All I can do is hope to do better the next time.

There are a lot of great examples and quotes in Pickert’s article (and comments following it). So many that I want to quote here, but I will just recommend that you click over and read it yourselves. If you have a big dreamer in your life, it is worth the read.

You cannot predict the path an authentic, self-motivated learner is going to take. When you guess — and then decide to go ahead and pull the plug because you know it won’t work out — you eliminate all the learning that happens along the way.

It really goes along with the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” The journey is all about the learning, the trials and tribulations, the mistakes and the triumphs, the tears and the joy. When we tell our kids, “This just isn’t going to work,” we remove the opportunity for them to experience all of those things.

Related blogs:

The 30 Year Old Ninja – “I quit my job, I moved to Japan. I want to be a Ninja. What’s your dream?” – Talk about following your dreams at any age!!

I should have known when I married my husband Jody — an avid gamer — that someday down the road our future children would be gamers as well, but I didn’t think much about it. I kind of thought my husband would eventually grow out of his gaming “phase.” I mean, grown men don’t play video games and Dungeons and Dragons forever, right? Right???

After 12 years of marriage I think it’s safe to say that the gaming “phase” is not a phase at all. It’s just a part of who he is, just as much as not gaming is a part of who I am. And I am OK with that. I may have fought it for a while (ok, for years and years), but I eventually learned that it wasn’t productive and I wasn’t going to change who he is, so I’ve mostly accepted it.

So now we have a 6 year old (who just lost his first tooth!) and a 9 year old (how did that happen?!) and they both LOVE computer games. Minecraft is a favorite in this house, as well as Roblox, Sims and a handful of others. Unlike my husband, who has accepted that I’m just not a gamer, the kids have not been so easily convinced.

When they first started playing Minecraft I joined them a couple of times. I had a hard time moving my character around and — big surprise — just didn’t get into the game. So I stopped playing with them. I figured Jody could play with them as he enjoys it and they were placated…for a while.

Fast forward several months. Ava would periodically ask me to play Minecraft with them. I would find an excuse or tell her it’s not my thing or whatever. I just really didn’t want to play. However, when she asked me the other day, I considered my answer carefully. I know the game is important to her and I want to support that and be a part of it, even if it is hard for me. So I said yes. Ava was ecstatic.

I’ve since played with them a few times and I’ve gotten a lot better about moving around and was surprised to find that I was actually having fun collecting wood and other supplies for the kids to build us a house. And I was surprised by how well they shared resources and helpful they were to me when I didn’t know how to craft a stone pickaxe or torches or whatever. And how much they appreciated me playing with them. I’ve heard several times from both of them, “it was so fun when you played with us, Mom!” And ya know what? It really was.

And so I’m trying to do a better job about playing with them when they want me to even if it isn’t my favorite thing to do. Even if I need to vacuum or water the garden or load the dishwasher. Today I even initiated it myself and it was fun. The time spent connecting with them is priceless. Who knows how long they will want their mom to play with them. But for now they do. And for now I will.

I’d love to hear from you!Do YOU play any computer/video games with your kids even though you are not into games? What has your experience been?

One of the things I love about unschooling is that I’m often exposed to things/experiences that I might not explore on my own if it weren’t for my kids. One of those experiences that’s come up recently is sewing.

I’ve had my mom’s old sewing machine in my basement for years. I had a brief desire to learn to sew (beyond what I did in home-ec class in high school) when Ava was a baby. I tried sewing some diaper inserts for her FuzziBunz. My mom helped me with them and it was fine, but I never got excited about it. Once a few inserts were sewn, back into the basement the sewing machine went.

Fast forward nine years (has it really been that long?!) and my formerly cloth-diapered baby has expressed an interest in learning to sew. Some friends of her’s recently made doll clothes for her American Girl doll for Ava’s birthday and another friend sewed a dress for her own doll. There’s nothing like friends learning to do something cool to give you a little push in the same direction. Ava decided she wanted to learn to sew too.

I hauled the old White Jeans Machine from the basement and was pleasantly surprised to find it already threaded, since I really had no idea how to do it myself! Ava and I grabbed an old shirt and I set her up to practice. She loved it!

Then the needle came unthreaded and it was up to me to figure out how to thread it again. Thankfully the sewing machine has a little diagram on it which made threading it easier than I thought. It took a little trial and error, but I got it going again. Woot! I got to learn something too! The practicing resumed.

A couple of days later we made a stop at my mom’s house to check out her fabric stash. Ava picked out a few fabrics to try making doll-sized pillows. And I chose several scraps to make into prayer flags for our sunroom — something I’d actually been wanting to do for several weeks after reading a guest post Create an Outdoor Space You Love on my friend Sara’s blog. I already added a few throw rugs and twinkle lights, but it still needed more color.

After I helped Ava a bit with sewing her doll pillow, I was excited to get to work on my prayer flags. I ended up needing my mom’s help with loading a bobbin, but once I got that down, I was set. It felt good to made something and I’m happy with how they turned out. I plan to make a second set for Ava’s bedroom.

I think it’s pretty awesome that my mom’s old (can I call it mine now?) sewing machine sat for years without getting any love, but when the time was right, it was here for me, for Ava, for us. I’m happy to have it and am thankful that my mom passed it on to me way back when. I’m excited to see what kinds of things we create using this old machine and curious to see if my son will want to play with it too. He’s done a tiny bit of sewing on it so far that first night I got it out. Time will tell. I do know that this time around the sewing machine won’t be retiring to the basement any time soon!

I’ve since started sewing a little dress for Ava’s doll. I’m mostly just playing around, but I’m having fun and isn’t that how all of the best learning takes place anyway?

If anyone has any tips for teaching kids to sew or fun, easy sewing projects for adults and kids, I’m all ears. A friend of mine just told me about these paper sewing sheets for kids and I plan to print some out for myself as well as Ava. And I just came across 10 Simple Sewing Projects for Kids. I’m guessing there’s a whole lot out there if I just start looking. Yay sewing!

Childbirth is one of those amazing things in life that’s nothing short of a miracle and leaves me in awe. Whether it’s reflecting on the birth of my children, hearing about a friend’s birth or reading the birth story of a total stranger, it simply amazes me.

Animal births are just as amazing, perhaps even more so, because they follow their animal instincts and simply. give. birth.

A week ago I received a text from my friend Michelle, who has a small farm, letting me know that her Nigerian Dwarf goat Truffles was in labor. I knew of the impending labor and had been hounding asking her daily for a week if the babies had come yet and was beginning to feel like the annoying friend of a pregnant lady — “Are you in labor yet? Did you have your baby yet? Are you getting close? Any news on baby?” Eventually I told her as long as she promised to tell me when they were born, I would stop harassing her.

I expected a text after they’d been born, so I was both surprised and elated when she was kind enough to text me to let me know the babies were coming…imminently.

I hadn’t given it any prior thought, but when Michelle said Truffles was in labor and it was only 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night, I thought maybe, just maybe I could hang out at her farm and actually be there FOR the birth — you know, like a goat doula! I didn’t want to impose, but I had to ask.

Our conversation that evening went like this:

I was so excited! I was going to get to attend a birth. 🙂

It wasn’t more than 20 minutes later that she texted,“Better hurry! She’s pushing.”
Quickly followed by,“Just park outside the gate and run back!!”

It was then that I threw on some warmer clothes, jumped in my car and headed to her farm which is thankfully only about 5 minutes away.

As I pulled into her driveway I got the text,“One out.”

!!!

I hightailed it to the barn out back where Michelle, her husband and their two boys were oohing and aahing over the first of the babies (or kids if you want to be technical) – a doeling. She was tiny and dark and beautiful and precious.

Truffles took a break then before birthing babies # 2, 3, and yes 4! Smart mama. 🙂 Perhaps she knew she still had a lot of work ahead of her.

I took on video and flashlight duty while Truffles birthed baby #2 and 3. Then, as Truffles birthed baby #4, Michelle called me into the pen with them to help and I got to fulfill my role as a goat doula. 🙂 I helped dry off the new babies, keep them all straight (it gets confusing with 4 babies), help them nurse and of course, love on them. It was the perfect way to get a birth and baby fix.

And that’s how I became a goat doula. I wonder if there’s a market for that?? 😉

Here I am loving on one of the sweet babes.

Truffles ended up with three girls (doelings) and one boy (buckling). Michelle was very pleased.

The video below is of Truffles birthing the third doeling (which came out breech). I don’t know if it needs a warning. It’s not excessively graphic, but it is a birth so, you know… If you don’t want to watch the birth, scroll down for pics (that my friend Sara from Walk Slowly, Live Wildly) of the little sweeties when they were two days old.

Here’s mama Truffles with some of her kids when they were two days old:

Mama Truffles and all four of her kids:

A close up of one of the adorable kids – the buckling:

A chicken keeps watch over Truffles and her kids:

Now that the kids are a little over a week old I really want to go back for a visit. Michelle tells me they are adorable as can be and bouncing all over the place, even on top of their mama! Who can pass on that kind of cuteness?! I hope to head that way for some more goat snuggles soon.

Photo credit: Big thanks to my friend Sara (who blogs at Walk Slowly, Live Wildly) for letting me use her photos (the bottom four) in my post. Sara is embarking on a new farm adventure of her own soon (and blogging about it) and is just as smitten by Michelle’s goaties as I am! 🙂

We’ve been unschooling for a relatively short period of time, but over the past couple of months I felt like things had really started falling into place. I felt like I gained an understanding of what unschooling is all about — and what it isn’t. Like I was saying YES more often than saying NO and it felt good. Like I could let go of the little things and not sweat the small stuff. Like I started to really “get” what my kids needed from me and how to provide it. And we were all getting along SO. WELL. And it felt great. And perhaps I started to get a little self-righteous ’cause I knew what I was doing (or at least I thought I did). That’s where I made my first mistake — thinking I had it all figured out.

And then this thing happened that shattered my confidence in my skills as an unschooling mama and as a parent in general…

The long and the short of it is that there was a misunderstanding between me and my 8-year-old daughter Ava and it turned into an ugly, UGLY, sad battle of wills (good Lord, we are both stubborn as hell!) that left both of us in tears.

I thought my husband had told her one thing and I was trying to support what I thought he’d said. Turns out (I learned the next day) that he never said it. (Had I just asked him what he had told her instead of assuming, I’m pretty sure the whole thing could have been avoided. Yes, that is what you get when you assume.)

That night I pretty much went against everything I had learned and been doing for the past couple months and I’m sure that caused an enormous amount of confusion and frustration on my daughter’s part. And once we were in the thick of our “battle of wills,” I didn’t know what to do. Should I “give in” and rescind what I told her? Will that be “letting her win?” Do I stand my ground no matter what the price? Does it really matter if she does X, Y or Z? Do I even know a damn thing about anything right now??

Ugh. UGH!!!

We were obviously not going to get anywhere continuing what we had been doing. I felt terrible and was at a total loss. I had no idea what to do other than to pick up my phone, retreat into my bathroom, close the door and ask for help.

I texted my good friend Rebecca (also an unschooling mama) to ask for her advice. She listened. She reassured me. And she gave it to me straight, but without judgement. It helped me sooooo much. I also let myself feel my feelings (something I think my sister Carrie would have been proud of) and let myself cry. And I had a little talk with myself, “You don’t have to know what to do 24/7, Amy. It’s OK to make mistakes.”

Once Ava had calmed down and I had taken several deep breaths, I took Rebecca’s advice and talked with her (Ava). I let Ava see that I’d been crying. I told her how I was feeling. I apologized for our fight and told her that parenting can be hard stuff and I don’t always know the “right” thing to do. She came to me for a very welcome hug and we sat together for a while.

Eventually I asked her if she had any suggestions on what we should do (one of Rebecca’s tips). Guess what? She did! We came to a solution together and it all worked out — not the way I had thought it would when our “fight” first began and probably not the way Ava anticipated either, but it worked out and nobody was in tears. Nobody felt that they hadn’t been heard. Nobody went to bed that night feeling defeated.

I later came across this quote from Buddha that I think illustrates nicely one of the things I learned that night:

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.– Buddha

Although that night didn’t go “according to plan,” with the help of my friend, working through my feelings and talking with Ava, I conquered myself. And that kind of victory was pretty sweet.

A school garden can be a wonderful outdoor classroom. Children can learn a variety of subjects while working with others to grow their own food. But in some school districts the children have the gardens to grow the food, but are forbidden from eating it in their lunchrooms.

When I first read that the Chicago Public Schools are not able to use the produce grown in their more than 40 school gardens in the lunchroom, I was shocked. Why grow it if you can’t consume it? The truth is that due to rules set by the district and its meal provider the food must be either given away, sent home with students, or sold.

“In order to use food in the school food program, it would need to meet specific/certified growing practices,” CPS spokeswoman Monique Bond said.

These requirements would include eliminating all “pesticides and insecticide” applications and using only “commercially prepared organic compost and fertilizers,” said Bob Bloomer, regional vice president of Chartwells-Thompson.

Commercial vendors, though, don’t have to abide by these rules. They can sell the district produce treated with several pesticides and grown in nonorganic fertilizer.

But produce grown by the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences on its 25-acre farm wouldn’t make the grade because, for example, it treats its corn with a single pesticide.

The school district touts using some local produce in its lunch program, but the produce that is most local of all — grown right outside their doors — is off limits. Children are being denied the most local and fresh produce of all. How does that make any sense?

According to the CDC, more than one-third of U.S. adults (over 72 million people) and 17% of U.S. children are obese. For Chicago children ages 6-11, the obesity rate is 28%. So in an area where more and more children are overweight or obese and, as evidenced in Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, some American first graders can’t identify vegetables, the system is denying them healthy, local food.

Unfortunately, this is happening other school districts as well. Sybil who blogs at Musings of a Milk Maker told me on Facebook that this is also the case at the public school she is trying to get her daughter into.

Andrea Ward isn’t surprised by any of this. She had this to say on Facebook, “Lunch food is a big time business with big time rules and greed. Education is never about the kids (unless you are the one in the trenches–then that’s all you care about). Otherwise, it’s about politics. And politics is about money.”

However, other school districts across the country, such as Auburn School District in Washington state, have been able to adopt a garden to cafeteria plan. The school district’s 1 1/2 acre organic garden and orchard produces “fruits and vegetables for student lunches and snacks in 10 elementary schools. In addition to garden produce, the Auburn School District purchases from local farmers for all 22 schools.” This single garden produces food for all elementary schools during the growing and harvesting seasons.

Joanne White who blogs at Media Mum told me about her son’s elementary school in the Boulder Valley School District, Colo., where the school garden provides produce for its own salad bar. Joanne said, “The kids are fully involved from garden to table. No way Jamie Oliver would find any of them not knowing what a tomato is!”

In other school districts, the students eat what they grow, but not necessarily in the lunchroom, however not for the same reasons that the Chicago Public School District gave.

Karen from Eternal Maternal said her son participated in a school garden program at his elementary school located in Vancouver School District in Washington State. The children ate what they grew, but due to a variety of reasons including not enough of any one ingredient, lack of preparation time, etc., the produce was not used in the school cafeteria. Karen said, “I think it’s very important that kids learn where their food comes from and what it takes to get it to the point that it can be eaten. Providing food for oneself is a basic need. Typically, we don’t have to do it for ourselves until we’re in college and what do we do then? Go to the grocery store and buy a case of Ramen. When children learn to grow food that can sustain themselves, even if only partially, it gives them a sense of accomplishment, raises their awareness of the environment and, whether they realize it or not, raises their level of security because it’s a way they know of to care for themselves.”

At Stylin Momma Katy’s daughter’s charter elementary school in Maryland, all of the children participate in the school garden in one way or another. Her daughter is in kindergarten where they are in charge of pollination. The garden food is not used in the school cafeteria food (which is brought in) and most students bring lunches from home. However, Katy said, “they will sometimes have a sampling station in the lunchroom where the kids can try the foods picked from the garden, or they will use it in cooking class. They also have a school produce stand as a fundraiser.”

After hearing about the practices of different school districts, I have to say I find the reasoning behind Chicago Public School District’s ban on garden food in the lunchroom appalling. I have to agree with Andrea above who said, “it’s about politics. And politics is about money.” If the district had these kids’ best interests at heart, they would find a way to allow the locally grown garden food into the cafeterias.

Despite all of this, I am pleased to hear that many districts — especially inner-city districts like Chicago — have implemented school gardens. Perhaps even if the children are not allowed to eat the food in the lunchroom, they still are learning the valuable life lesson of how to grow it and perhaps are able to take some of it home to their families to enjoy.

Do your children have a school garden? Does the school use the produce in their lunchroom? How do you feel about Chicago’s policy?

I’ve decided to take a little break from blogging (read more about the reasons why), but wanted to continue to provide interesting and insightful content on my blog in the meantime. For a while I will have guest posts from various bloggers interspersed with posts by me when I am moved to write. Thank you for your understanding. — Amy (CDG)

Emily Barrett of Environmental Health Perspectives recently provided a great synopsis of an updated review of food contact materials and their potential to leach endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC’s) into our food.

Author of the review, Jane Muncke, didn’t mince words when issuing her findings, calling into question the current means of estimating the true level of exposure to EDC’s through food contact materials. Her conclusions included the following major points:

Food packaging is an underestimated source of chemical food contamination

Migration into dry foods can be considerable

Substances of concern, like endocrine disrupting chemicals, are widely used in food contact materials

Risk assessment of endocrine disrupting chemical food contamination is challenging because exposure and effect assessment are not always straight forward

Muncke’s insights have caused me to carefully reconsider which food packaging I choose for my own growing children. Based on her article, I’ll be investigating benzophenones (a known carcinogen) and organotins, two groups of suspected EDC’s, which are legally used in the United States and European Union.

And as Barrett pointed out, we now have even more motivation to choose fresh foods over processed ones.

The guidelines do not consider the collective numbers and toxicity – alone or in combination – of all of the chemicals that can leach from the packaging, the author points out.* In a chemical mix, individual health effects may be magnified. Printing, ink, adhesives, recycled cardboard and the plastic containers can all introduce unwanted chemicals into a single food product, creating a mix with additive or synergystic effects. What’s more, the chemicals may degrade over time or form new compounds that migrate into food. These can go entirely unmeasured since it is nearly impossible to identify and test for them all.

Kids may be at particular risk. Not only are their bodies still developing and hence susceptible to environmental insults, but they tend to eat more packaged foods, a more limited diet and more food for their body weight than adults do. There are similar concerns for pregnant women and their fetuses, as well as obese adults, whose bodies may process these chemicals differently from their trimmer counterparts.

Tips for Reducing Your Exposure to EDC’s in Food Packaging

Avoid PVC in plastic food wrap: ask your butcher to prepare the cuts of meat you want and wrap it in paper. Most butcher or freezer paper is coated with wax or polyethylene which are better alternatives. As for blocks of cheese, look for packages with Ziplok style closures, and plastic packages that have been heat-sealed, because most of these bags are made from polyethylene.

Buy fresh or frozen produce packaged in polyethylene bags: BPA is found in most epoxy linings of aluminum cans, glass jar lids and the bottom of some frozen cardboard boxes – although there a few BPA-free options available

Choose jarred foods when possible – especially those with space between the lid and the food

If you do choose to purchase foods packaged in plastic, do not reuse, cook or heat food in them – even if recommended by the manufacturer; this may include some microwavable meals, so just remove them from the plastic container and heat in glass

>> Related link: The Breast Cancer Fund has recently released a new study about BPA in food containers.

Photo Source: Flickr via _anh

Alicia Voorhies is a Registered Nurse who left the rat race to pursue her dream of owning a business. She traded working as Director of Nursing in an organization for disabled adults to relax and enjoy her love of medical research in alternative health ideas. She was immediately attracted to the mysteries of toxic plastics and their effect on children and quickly learned that avoiding endocrine-disrupting chemical in common household products can be overwhelming. While searching for safe alternatives, she quickly realized how limited the available information for parents was – and that’s how her education-based company, The Soft Landing, was born.